All Saints - Faith in the future

What is Faith in the Future – an introduction by Rev’d Stephen Griffiths on Pentecost 2025

From late 2024 a small group has been meeting to discuss the future needs of All Saints Oakham. After the successes of the window restoration and the lighting project it is now time to seek God’s direction for the growing and sustaining the church. This is part of the everyday work of living the Christian life and being the church. We have open doors and open hearts ready to receive all who seek God. All of our current services and activities have welcome and sharing faith at their heart. But it is time to think and pray about where God wants us to channel our time, energy and money. Pentecost is the ideal time to pause and ponder. The Holy Spirit is God’s creative and missional power at work in the world, equipping his people to fulfil the Pentecost commission of sharing Christ’s message. The Faith in the Future group has been commissioned by the PCC to develop some proposals for consideration. It is not about uniformity (making everyone say or do the same thing!). It is about variety (enabling the church to share Christ and serve the community in many ways). Faith in the Future covers some important aspects of sustaining and growing the church which we cannot ignore (e.g. our energy costs and usage). It covers some things that we are already special for us (worship, music, heritage). It covers some things that require a fresh approach (youth, community, funding). Driving all this is putting our faith in God into action to fulfil his plans and purposes for us. No church can ‘engineer’ growth by adopting a simple formula, but has to approach this prayerfully with readiness to grow and learn along the way.

What is Faith in the Future – Andy Compton, Chair of the Faith in the Future Group

Faith in the Future is really a convergence of two things that need to be inextricably connected. The first is that there are a number of needed improvements and updates to the church that the PCC have identified over recent years.  The largest one is the need for a new heating system in the not too distant future.  There are also other matters that have been identified including better toilets, an improvement to the catering facilities that would facilitate better fellowship and better facilities for families. It makes sense to look at improvements in the round so that each element supports the other. Given the cumulative scale of these projects the cost would exceed our traditional methods of fundraising and we would need to investigate new schemes such as National Lottery funding.  That in turn favours a single large project.

The other, and more important, strand is that in addition to the future of the church structure, what is to be the future of the church community; and the former must serve the latter.  Faith in Future is fundamentally about how we secure the future of this worshipping community through growth, particularly as it relates to families and younger members. Currently it is not clear who is going to be assuming the key roles that keep the church functioning as a worshipping community in the medium term, or indeed, who that worshipping community will be. So, we are embarking on a vitally important piece of work to develop a plan for All Saints that brings growth, secures our future, nurtures our faith and safeguards and increases our relevance to the wider community here in Oakham and Rutland.

This is a large task that, for the sake of manageability, we have broken down into seven Work Streams (click on the pictures and links below) that address the key aspects of a plan for the future, but which are of course only useful in how they serve the wider objective and there will be issues that span more than one Work Stream.